Republicans have put more emphasis on spending cuts, while Democrats have put their focus on job creation, but leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress have declared themselves committed to addressing the nation’s biggest economic challenges: reducing the spiraling deficits and debt, bringing down unemployment, addressing the long-term health of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“We in the House have continued to lead on the issue of cutting spending. My question is, where is the president?” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Majority Leader, said in a Twitter message last week.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement Thursday: “Our top concern is creating American jobs. We need to cut spending, but we also need to protect our fragile economy.”

And yet, the closer that Washington moves toward full-blown election season, the greater appetite both sides will have for small, symbolic issues that appeal to their base voters rather than the tougher action on big, thorny issues.

The NPR debate is a classic case.

The public radio organization gets a trivial amount of money from the federal government, about $5.4 million a year. Most of its $65 million budget comes from fees that local stations pay for its programming.

But driven in part by recent scandals that called into question the organization’s objectivity, Republicans quickly pledged this week to largely end federal funding for NPR and prohibit its local public stations from using the $22 million they get in federal funds from going to pay for NPR programming. Lawmakers in the House debated the measure for much of the day on Thursday.

Conservatives have pushed for an end to support for public radio and television for years. But the recent scandals — in which NPR executives were caught on tape expressing distaste for conservatives — helped provide the ammunition to Republicans in the House to push the bill through.

By the end of the day, lawmakers voted 228 to 192 to end direct federal funding to NPR and prohibit local stations from using federal money to support its programming.

Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate are expected to block the measure. And President Obama has already indicated he does not support it. In an official statement of administration policy before the House vote, the White House made its position clear.

“Undercutting funding for these radio stations, notably ones in rural areas where such outlets are already scarce, would result in communities losing valuable programming, and some stations could be forced to shut down altogether,” the statement said.

Which raises the question that several supporters of NPR raised Thursday during the bill’s debate. Why spend time debating a measure that make no substantial dent in the nation’s fiscal challenges?

“This legislation does not serve any fiscal purpose, but it does serve an ugly ideological one,” said Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California. “This legislation is not about reforming NPR. It is about punishing NPR.”

Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York mocked the NPR bill, saying the Republicans had saved the country from “Click and Clack,” the brothers who do the “Car Talk” show on NPR.

Republicans countered that the legislation could be seen as part of the larger effort to cut spending that is not necessary, even if it saves only about $5 million out of a multitrillion-dollar budget. Mr. Cantor said it should no longer be a priority to fund an organization that veers “far from what most Americans would like to see as far as the expenditure of their taxpayer dollars.”

In the end, the House spent almost a full day debating the measure even as they pushed off consideration of a final resolution to the current budget stalemate for several more weeks.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…